Monday, October 15, 2012

You give them an inch....

I have fabulous news! The BEST! Anabel is sleeping through the night!! *Cue angels singing "Hallelujah!" here*

Oh, hang on a minute... what's that?
Wait.... I take that back...

Anabel WAS sleeping through the night.....

Ugh... and so begins our sad tale...

Anabel has always been an on and off sleeper. Sometimes she has been awesome, sometimes she has been terrible. The worst weeks she was waking up - I am not exaggerating - four or five times a night. Three times a night between the hours of 7pm and 6am were very normal for a very long time. And just when we would train her out of it to sleep through, something would happen; she would get sick, or teething, or whatever. ugh.. so so hard.

Well, we finally, after many nights of crying it out and soothing techniques, finally got her sleeping through the night. At long last, the struggling was over! And for about 5 weeks or more she has been a perfect angel from 7pm to 5am when I would give her a bottle and she would stay down until around 6.30am. Life has been awesome..

Until the night....
I gave her....
that darn bottle...

I know!! I bought it upon myself! She was really upset and it hadn't happened in so long, and it was around 9.30pm and I said to Juan, "Once wont hurt, she's been so good, and I just want her to calm down. She's so upset..." He warned me what would happen, he practically begged me not to do it, but I refused to believe that our perfect sleeper could ever revert back to her evil ways.

I. was. wrong. Oh, how wrong I was!! From that fated night a week ago, she has now been up and crying for water some nights every couple of hours. I have once again resorted back to sitting in the rocking chair watching her watch me, as we both dare eachother to crack. But you know the worst part of all? No, it's not the agonized cry that wakes me at 2am, nor the desperate plea as her chubby little hand holds out that empty plastic bottle, nor the ear-wrenching wails we hear as we lay there letting her 'cry it out' for the past two nights...
Nope. It's the heavy *sigh* I hear from Juan's side of the bed as we lay in the darkness, and I know exactly what he is thinking...